Monday, July 11, 2016

An outfall of the disastrous 2016 Zuni Loop FD effort was that WB6JDH's (Dick Palmer) tent poles got squirreled away to my domicile and Dick made the trip last Saturday to retrieve them. By the way, just so you get an idea of what a crapfest field Day was this year, we fell from 11,000-plus points last year (a 33-year high) to just over 8,000 point (duped but not verified.) Our QRO competitors down the road in Orange County and perennial powerhouses, OCARC/w6ZE, fell off to just under 5,000 points and they were off by about 3,000 points as well. But more later.

Anyway, Dick picked up his poles but took the occasion to bring down his modified and hot-rodded HW-7. I will fill this post out later with details but this is his own version of an earlier mod for this rig that basically "hots up" the receiver to a fire-breathing -125 dBm. He does so by incorporating two circuits from the venerable Ugly Weekender article, shown below:

As I said, I will provide notes and descriptions later, but for now, here are some pictures: